(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

He spent years perfecting his ride. Custom engine, high-end rims, and a three-stage paint job that turned heads at every stoplight. It was his pride and joy, his investment, his identity on wheels.

And then one weekend at a local car show, it was gone. Stolen. Just like that.

When he filed the insurance claim, he expected a check that would match his masterpiece. But instead, he got hit with a harsh truth. Can you prove what it was worth? In this episode, we dive into a case that shows why building your dream ride or any high-end project means nothing to the insurance company if you don't have the paperwork to back it up.

Because when it comes to custom build, it's not about what you create. It's about what you can prove. Hello and welcome to another episode of Top Priority Chronicles.

This episode is titled From Show Car to No Car. Proof is Everything. So this episode has to do with an insurance claim that was filed for a souped-up old-school vehicle that was stolen.

So let me give you some background on the case. The gentleman had a really nice souped-up vehicle and he went to a local car show and he first showed off his car. I believe it started off as a Kid Frost concert.

Or it started off as a car show and then it was a Kid Frost concert later in the evening. That's what it was. So he parked his car in the parking lot that was provided and he went to the Kid Frost concert afterward.

And lo and behold, once he came out, his vehicle was stolen. So I just want to give some, I usually don't give too many details, but this is a case that was an exception because I know we have some old-school vehicle lovers and I don't know if you are one, but I wanted to just give the description of the vehicle that was given to me and that way you can kind of form a mental picture of what the vehicle looked like and maybe even the to the owner. The vehicle was a 1963 Supersport Impala, frame-off, rebuilt by the gentleman himself from the ground up.

Every part on the car was replaced and upgraded with the exception of the black interior, the engine heads, and the block. So he did not replace those. He had the vehicle repainted with a three-stage paint job.

The vehicle was painted black with custom chrome flakes and patterns. It had marble and water effects throughout the vehicle. The engine was a small block 350 rebuilt and everything under the hood was new, chromed out with blue wires and glow lights.

The vehicle had Travelstar 13-inch tires and rims, all brand new. There were 10 batteries under the hood to operate the hydraulic system. This gentleman only drove his vehicle to special occasions and he only drove it about once a month.

He had taken out the original two-knob stereo system that came and replaced it with an Alpine CD player. He had two Alpine 10-inch speakers, two Lansing amplifiers, custom door panels with tweeters, and two six-by-nine speakers in the back window. And everything this gentleman had done to his car, he had done it himself.

He purchased the vehicle from a friend and then he did all the work himself, which he estimated to be about over a hundred thousand dollars. So if you can form a mental picture of that vehicle, a black chromed out 1963s Impala SS with it sounded like it had good beats on it. It had a hydraulic system which makes it jump up and down and it sounded like it was his pride and joy.

When he talked about it, he described it, it was just like it was right there in front of him and he was really bummed out about the car being stolen. To me, what I think made the vehicle stand out is that he did not have an alarm system on it and he did not have any anti-theft devices attached to the vehicle. So that made it an easy target.

He had never let this let this vehicle out of his sight prior to this incident and the one time he did, he regretted it. So this case really stood out to me because this gentleman was just a hard-working gentleman. He was a self-employed, he was also a truck driver, but you could just tell he put his blood, sweat, and tears into his vehicle.

When I visited his home, his garage, you could tell he tinkered with vehicles for fun after work because that his garage was full of other, well I think he had another car in there or two and just full of parts and things. But he was the way he talked about doing the work and spending the time on the vehicles, going to get the parts, you know purchasing the car from a friend and really taking his time to get the car that he wanted. That was really a classic to him and so it really broke my heart to have someone pour their blood, sweat, and tears into something and spend so much time on it and so much money to have somebody else just take it and him not be able to get, you know, benefit from the fruits of his labor.

So that was a that was a hard one for me. I can say this wasn't one of the more one of the cases that pulled on my heartstrings. This was not.

This was more of a kind of cut and dry case. You still want to always, you know, if a wrong has been done, I always want it to be righted. But again, if you've watched any of my previous episodes, I let you know that I'm usually not privy.

Matter of fact, I shouldn't even say usually. I am not privy to find out the outcome if the insurance honored the claim or not. So I cannot give you that final outcome, but I can just tell you that this gentleman did.

He was able to give a description of what he did to the vehicle and the parts he purchased on the vehicle. And, you know, just given that these these car shows can be easy targets for thieves because they know that there'll be very nice cars there, cars that are worth a lot of money. And sometimes most times cars that they can if they steal it, they can get it off probably pretty quickly because they don't have to do anything to it.

So there's a good chance that that car show was targeted, that the car show was targeted. I can't say the gentleman, although he could have been targeted too. I don't, he didn't have anybody in mind specifically.

So he was not able to lead us to anyone. So what I, you know, just off the top of my head, I suspected that car show could have been targeted by people who were looking for an score. So he, he did file, I met him through him filing the insurance claim.

I work insurance SIU, which is special unit, special investigations unit. And we are sent out when the insurance company suspects fraud. So I went out and I met with the gentleman, took his recorded statement, took photos of his garage.

And I also went back out and talked to neighbors and asked them about if they had seen the vehicle, if they were familiar with the neighbor and other things, there was nothing that really stood out to me in the information that I gathered from the gentleman or his neighbors. But the premise of this case, and to be able to make your claim with the insurance company, it stands on being able to provide proof of your claim. First off, being able to provide proof of purchase of the vehicle and then proof of every single, if you want to be compensated for it, you have to be able to show proof of every work, all work that was done on the vehicle, all the parts that were purchased.

And if you did the work yourself, you really do want to come with all the receipts of the parts that you purchased and put on the car. So then you can make your claim for having the insurance consider time and your work that you put into the car, putting the pieces and parts into. It may cause for a rough estimation of how much time you put in.

And that's why I want to say upfront, keep track of everything, all receipts. If you can keep a little booklet where you're noting the hours that you're spending fixing the vehicle, the more information you have, the more acceptable the claim becomes for the insurance company. If they suspect fraud, they take more steps to try to wean out whatever their concerns are.

So if you give them everything they need up front, all the receipts, and if you just cross all your T's and dot out all your I's, you should be good to go. So I just want to encourage anyone that is working on a project, whether it be rebuilding a vehicle, a house, anything of high value, you want to make sure that you're keeping your receipts and documenting the work that's being done, the workers that are doing the work, and you're just keeping a track of all monies spent. So that way if you ever need to file a claim on that, you have all the documentation that the insurance company is going to request.

The insurance, I mean the insured, the gentleman that had rebuilt the car was very cooperative. I must say, I personally did not read any red flags from him. Doesn't mean that there wasn't any, but I didn't pick up on any anything.

He just seemed to be forthcoming. He was just authentic in his presentation. He was very cool, calm, and collected.

He didn't take the questioning he didn't feel like he was under interrogation with the questioning. He was just very forthcoming and as if someone who wanted to get their property back. So he was a pleasure to work with and you know the challenge for him is that all the work he did he paid cash.

He paid a friend $23,000 for the car off top and then he did all the work himself and you know went and bought the parts in cash. So the challenge was being he didn't save all of his receipts and so he didn't have a paper trail that the insurance company was requesting. And again I don't know if the insurance company paid out on the claim and it's not impossible, but without the vehicle to even vouch for what was done or any paper trail you're going to have a a steep uphill battle with fighting with the insurance company to get your money and to get what the you know to get the worth of the vehicle not just what the blue book value that they're going to look up and try to give you.

So I just want to thank you all for chiming in for this episode of Top Cardiac Chronicles. This was a short one but I wanted to make sure that I give that little tidbit that if you're ever filing an insurance claim or before you even get to a claim track everything keep a paper trail track everything keep a little booklet and keep all of your expenses and your receipts together that way if ever a claim comes on or say you happen to pass that property down to your children if it's if there if a claim is filed you want them to have all of that information or if you sell the vehicle pass all that information on to the new owner because if anything happens they need to file a claim they will most likely very well need it. Thank you again for watching I look forward to doing this again next week if you have any episode ideas or feedback you'd like to share anything you like to suggest feel free to make contact with me online at toppriorityinvestigations.com or you can email me at jamiettop at toppriorityinvestigations.com and again I hope to see you again back here next week.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)